All Hands on Leopard
Posted 12/12/2007 at 11:39am
| by Rik Myslewski
LEOPARD TOP TRICK NO.1 - SAVE CUSTOM SEARCH SETS
The enhancements to the Finder window’s Sidebar are some of Leopard’s true treats. Here’s how to take advantage of one of its niftier features: the ability to create specific searches and then access them again later.
1. Open a Find Window. In the Finder, press Command-F and a Find window will appear. The first Find criteria you’ll see is Kind. Click on it, and you’ll see a drop-down list of default criteria. At the bottom of that list is the ever-popular Other, which will lead you to a list of 144 more criteria.

The magic word Other will reveal a world of near-unimaginable detail.
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2. Explore the Possibilities. The additional criteria range from Album to Year Recorded, and contain such esoterica as Altitude (“The altitude of the item in meters above sea level, expressed using the WGS84 datum”) and Phone Number (“The phone numbers associated with this item”). Take a moment to explore - and note that by selecting the In Menu checkbox, you can add any item to the default criteria list.

We’re willing to bet that you didn’t know some of these search criteria even existed. We sure didn’t.
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3. Refine and Save. We want to set up a search for recent JPEGs taken with a 300mm lens at ISO 400 or less. After selecting the appropriate criteria, click the Save button, give the new search set a name - in this case, Recent Long-Lens - make sure that Add To Sidebar is checked, and then click Save.

We set the options in a Finder window’s Find pane to display surreptitiously captured, nonnoisy JPEGs shot in the past half year.
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4. Search and Ye Shall Find. A new item now appears in the Sidebar’s Search For section entitled - appropriately enough - Recent Long-Lens. When we click on it, all the JPEGs we’ve taken in the last six months that meet the focal length and ISO criteria we set in step 3 are displayed. To get rid of a search set, just drag it from the Sidebar to the Desktop, and - poof!

That tie, by the way, is actually a mini washboard - the image was shot at a musical-saw festival.
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